Google's Android platform manager Eric Chu has expressed disappointment with sales of paid-for Android apps at a conference in San Francisco this week.
Despite the prolific nature of the Android platform – set to grow even further as a plethora of Android tablets hit the market in 2011 – the company admits that users aren't buying enough premium apps.
Forbes quotes Chu as saying he is "not happy" with the performance of the app market in terms of sales, before going on to outline a roadmap of general Android App Market updates for 2011.
Roadmap
The first is something that has been a long time coming: in-app payments. Playing some serious catch-up with Apple's iOS, Google will finally launch an in-app payment process for Android in Q1.
Making it easy for users to find good apps is a serious problem for all the app platforms and Google says it hopes to make strides in this arena throughout the year, although it did not elaborate much on how aside from tweaking the ranking algorithm.
App developers are also being encouraged to make use of the Android address book in order to make sharing apps easier for users, particularly as it pulls in contacts from multiple sources including users' Gmail and Facebook accounts.
Ensuring that developers can make money from their efforts is essential to the success of the Android app platform; if there's no money in it, developers will move to other platforms and the market's quality will fall.
So Android owners, do yourself a favour: go and buy an Android app today.
Via Forbes and Apple Insider
